The "Tao, the Way - the
basic Chinese belief in an order and harmony in nature. This grand concept
originated in remote times, from observation of the heavens and of
nature−the rising and setting of sun, moon, and stars, the cycle of day and
night, and the rotation of the seasons−suggesting the existence of laws of
nature, a sort of divine legislation that regulated the pattern in the
heavens and its counterpart on earth."(1)

The following essay has, for
the most part, been extracted from an editorial which appeared in the
journal Chiron (2) and appropriately summarizes many of the ideas
contained within this present issue of KRONOS.

"Throughout antiquity priests
and poets warned our ancestors that riot, plague, and the fall of nations
were merely the profane manifestations of celestial disharmony, or what they
called 'a perturbation of the heavenly spheres.' In fact this view of man's
relationship to the cosmos was still current less than four hundred years
ago. In Shakespeare's Troilus andCressida (1602), for
example, we find Ulysses saying:

. . .but when the planets

In evil mixture to disorder
wander,

What plagues, and what
portents, what mutiny,

What raging, of the sea,
shaking of earth,

Commotion in the winds,
frights, changes, horrors,

Divert and crack, rend and
deracinate

The unity and married calm of
states

Quite from their fixture!"

In contrast to the ancients,
"modern" science holds a much different attitude towards the Cosmos.
Psychologically, a violent universe can be clearly recognized and tolerated,
providing our relative position in it is safely distant−which it is
tacitly assumed to be.

The fundamental "difference,
of course, between the [catastrophic] speculations of most of today's
scientists and Velikovsky's specific theory of celestial catastrophism" may
be summarized in two words−"space and time . . . Evidently
speculations about catastrophic phenomena oc­curring millions of years ago
in time, or millions of light years away in space, lead to little if any
psychological discomfort. ('Out of sight, out mind'?) When a similar idea is
presented in terms of what may have taken place within the sanctuary of our
solar system and on our planet, the terror and uncertainty it conjures up
apparently become a bogy too horrible for conscious consideration."

"If Velikovsky is right, we
may live in a . . . universe . . . which is extremely unstable and,
therefore, very unpredictable. Our uni­verse, the 'cosmic heart,' as it
were, may prove to have a congenital murmur. What I mean to say, and
forcefully, is this: The next act in the cosmic drama of colliding celestial
bodies may begin to unfold at al­most any moment−and without any
intercession on our behalf by some benevolent deity. It may be unfolding
even now.

Here, indeed, is a tragic view of 'man's fate'!

Yet once we accept the
reality of this fate, granting, of course, that it is a reality, our
willful decision to carry on−to create and strive, to live and love−
in spite of it can lend more heroic stature to our uncertain and
precarious existence."

Both Velikovsky's
supporters and critics "seem to expend their energies attempting to
either confirm or refute the particulars of Velikovskian catastrophism.
Neither has speculated on its potential ramifications in the field of
philosophy. Why?

Look at our newspapers.
When someone over eighty dies in his sleep, they tell us he died 'of
natural causes.' When someone dies in an auto­mobile accident, or in
combat, it is 'unnatural'? Of course none of us likes to think about
dying in an immediate sense, of his own death occurring today, right
now. Although we may recognize the ambivalence of life, the fact that
at birth we contract a terminal disease ('life') from which none of us
recovers, we tend to act as if we were going to live forever."

Sudden and violent death
are all around us and occur day in and day out throughout the course of
months, years, decades, centuries, and millennia.

Such abrupt deaths are
'unnatural' only if we fail to admit the obvious−sudden and violent
death is part of 'the nature of the universe.' If so, where is the
logic in believing what can happen to a man or to a tree cannot happen
to a planet?

Were the ancients right
all along? I am not thinking of only the obvious−sudden and violent
death is part of 'the nature of the universe.' Genesis Rabba, a
midrash (or exposition) on the Book of Genesis from fifth-century
Palestine, which says: 'In the beginning God created numer­ous worlds,
destroying one after the other as they failed to satisfy Him. All were
inhabited by man, a thousand generations of whom He cut off, leaving no
record of them.' I am also reminded of this observation by Arthur Waley
in The Way and its Power (1949)−the law of the universe, its
tao or 'way,' is ruthless, for 'when autumn comes no leaf is
spared because of its beauty, no flower because of its fragrance'."